The following description of background art may include insights, discoveries, understandings or disclosures, or associations together with disclosures not known to the relevant art prior to the disclosed embodiments but provided by the disclosed embodiments. Some of such contributions of the disclosed embodiments may be specifically pointed out below, whereas other such contributions of the disclosed embodiments will be apparent from their context.
In modern communication and computer networks, data exchange between programs and computers is a vital element. Different programs, computers and processors exchange data without human intervention. This kind of communication is usually called machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.
An example of a network technology where M2M communication is widely applied is a low-power wireless network, such as an IEEE 802.15.4 based embedded and sensor network. More recently, as machine-to-machine devices have become IP enabled, systems have become more open by using IP as a networking protocol.
Applications running in devices connected to the Internet may need information provided by M2M devices. One problem that relates to low-power wireless networks is accessing M2M end-points which are not continuously connected to the system. For conserving operating power there may be a large number of end-points which spend most of the time in a sleep-mode and enter a wakeup-mode only now and then at perhaps irregular intervals.